Yeah, I realized there are two different DTCC projects here. One is where they are moving their Trade Informaton Warehouse to blockchain. That’s the one where Axoni provided the DLT.
The other is the test you mentioned (I edited it into my post as well) where they tried to simulate the necessary txs/sec to mimic the US equity market. Corda was involved there but - this is the question - why would you need XRP to settle US equity trades?
In addition, it says in the R3 press release that they got up above 6k txs/sec...more than the XRP ledger can handle in any event

The Coindesk article explains that Axoni provided the DLT and smart contracts. Corda wasn’t utilized.
https://www.coindesk.com/15-banks-join-dtcc-post-trade-blockchain-as-project-enters-testing
What would be the purpose of XRP in this system?
Edit: if you read this press release from R3 in October, which was from a separate DTCC study, it’s pretty clear they’re talking about a private, permissioned chain and not the public XRP ledger
https://www.r3.com/news/dtcc-announces-study-results-demonstrating-that-dlt-can-support-trading-volumes-in-the-us-equity-markets/

There's really no evidence on anything special happening on the ledger during October. There is a spike in payments on the day or two the price & exchange volume spike happened in Sept, but that's usually the case. Ledger volume spikes with exchange volume.
Last I read, that DTCC test happened in coordination with Axoni, IBM, and R3 (R3 was the technology consultant or something). No one even mentioned Ripple
The short interest on Bitfinex was getting near all time highs during that time & sentiment was pretty bearish going into September...so the simple explanation for the price spike is, it was a massive short squeeze

"No, you have to remember x-rapid is just wash trading"
Is also incorrect. Wash trading example: trading xrp for xrp in the same account on the same exchange. Using xrp as a bridge for foreign exchange conversion is not wash trading.

It sounds like a system for providing just-in-time xrp liquidity to any corridor, so as to ensure xrp is the cheapest payment path (i.e. just below the "threshold" cost).
That way, even though you're diluting the xrp supply, you more than make up for it in payment demand, which makes xrp more valuable, which eventually increases the price.
It sounds a bit like the Federal Reserve's open market operations, where the Fed injects & removes liquidity to keep short term interest rates at a desired level. To be max effective, might it need to work in reverse as well?
https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/a-closer-look-at-open-market-operations

I’m gonna have to agree; that would make a pretty nice press release
So if AmEx can build its own branded x border payments solution, FXIP, which runs on Ripple, Bank of America can offer its own branded custody solution which runs on Polysign?
That’s kind of where my brain goes. Very exciting stuff if so.

We all know Brad Garlinghouse thinks banks will hold digital assets by end of year (paraphrasing). I’ve never been clear on whether he means hold for themselves or on behalf of others (or both?)
But since he sounds so confident, does that imply that Polysign comes out of stealth before year end?

That was a good and responsible answer by David Schwartz, especially in a public forum. My slight twist on it is that at any time, the price reflects market participants’ perception of value. And perception is a very hard thing to model. If we suspend our disbelief for a second and consider xrp as a straight currency, what drives currency values? There’s nothing tangible backing them, no hard asset you can exchange them for. No price/earnings ratio. And with crypto, there are no GDP growth metrics or interest rate differentials to analyze, as there are with fiat currencies. What’s left is some mysterious mix of adoption/usage, news, and crowd psychology. The crowd psychology bit is what’s so squirrelly. Bulls beget more bulls, and bears beget more bears, leading to the manic depressive cycles we see.

Great post! The idea of a master algorithm that provides liquidity just-in-time to where it’s needed is kind of fascinating. Taking it a step further you could implement machine learning to anticipate where & when liquidity shortfalls could happen, and pre-empt them (and maybe vice versa). Maybe getting way off track. But although intuitively, it might seem like this would depress the xrp price, arguably it could increase the value of the network quite a bit - which would flow into the price, inevitably. It would be like a dynamic, real-time monetary policy and would optimize the advantage that Ripple has with its xrp stash.